Sales & Marketing Plan: How Marketing & Sales Can Communicate

What an inbound marketer is doing

Let’s start with what a marketer does for the company. A marketer should attract leads to your website with content. They come up with content- blogs and downloadable eBooks, webinars, whitepapers, etc.- that address the pain points of your potential customers. These customers then come to your website to see how your services can solve their pains. They fill out a form to download an eBook on your service and are then considered a lead.

Then it’s time to pass them off to the sales person, right? No. Then, a marketer nurtures these leads with more educational content. The goal is to have the leads raise their hand and tell you when they are ready to be contacted.  If the lead doesn’t take the bait, then they stay in the funnel receiving more educational content until they are ready or they are disqualified. If they do take the bait and end up at the bottom of the sales funnel (convert on a consultation form) then they are sales-ready and prepared to be passed off to the sales team.

What a sales person is doing

As we learned above, the salesperson is not going after every single lead that converts on the website. They are waiting until the lead is educated enough for a sales conversation. Once they are educated, the marketing team will alert the sales person. Then, the salesperson will contact the lead and have an educated conversation about what service or product they might be interested in and why they should purchase it from their company. Fingers crossed, this lead will be so educated and sales ready that they will jump for joy that the sales person contacted them at exactly the time they were prepared to make a decision.

What they do together

As we discussed earlier, the marketer is there to prepare the lead and pass them off to the salesperson when the lead is ready to purchase. But when the lead is passed off, the lead’s activity should be passed off as well. The salesperson should be informed what educational content this person has read, downloaded, engaged in on social media, etc.

In return, the salesperson should share information with the marketer. Things such as contact attempts: emails or calls, lead status updates: open, in progress, or closed, and revenue numbers in order to calculate ROI.

Conclusion

If sales and marketing departments work together to reach a common goal, then that goal can be reached easier than expected. Having these two departments sharing information and insight will also help you see ROI in your marketing efforts. If the marketing team knows which leads are closing and how much they brought in, they can find out how that lead got to your website and put effort into that particular marketing channel.

Takeaway

• Encourage open communication between sales and marketing
• Have marketing nurture and qualify leads
• Have sales speak to only qualified leads and report back to marketing on lead status and revenue

Photo Credit: Moyan_Brenn via Flickr